Introduction

SPL Checkout data is a book checkout data collected by the Seattle Public Library since 2017 due to the Open Data Initiative promoted by Seattle. It includes anonymous data of the number and types of checkouts (book, ebook, films etc.) each month. The trends I intend to look at are how historical events in the past few years may have impacted checkout trends.

Focusing on the Black Liberation Movement that peaked in June 2020 and COVID-19 pandemic that started influencing the U.S. in March 2020. I will be looking at trends over the years (CheckoutYear) and number of checkouts(Checkouts ) to identify possible increases and decreases of overall and individual items that may be indicative of these historical events.

For the Black Liberation Movement, I will be looking at a specific book - “The New Jim Crow”. The New Jim Crow discusses the social inequalities within the legal justice system. With Black Liberation Movement that was sparked by a legal justice issue, it would be valid to utilize this book as a source of measurement. As for COVID-19 pandemic, impact is examined through usage type (UsageType) and whether there is increased checkouts during pandemic where people are quarantined at home.

Noting that the two events occurred in 2020, I will be looking into possible checkout trends (Checkouts, CheckoutMonth) in 2020 (CheckoutYear).

Summary Information

When initially looking at the data, I was curious about whether historical events including Black Liberation Movement and COVID-19 pandemic that occurred between 2017-2023 had influence on number and types of checkouts from the Seattle Public Library.

To answer this inquiry, I first decided to identify the impact of Black Liberation Movement on checkout data through the checkout information of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. In 2020, 6 (June) had 1255 checkouts, which was the highest number. It is interesting to see the impact of historical events, which is reflected in library checkouts, as The New Jim Crow had the highest checkout number of 4241 in 2020 and lowest in 2023 with 55. This indicates that although the book was more encouraged to be checked out during the movement, it did not necessarily increase in checkout overall (afterwards). This may be something interesting to look into, such as would other books of similar topic have similar trends. Also, the average checkouts for each item is 16.9250815, while The New Jim Crow has an average checkout of 46.733945. This information should be viewed with a grain of salt as in the overall average, items of the same title but different variations will be seen as a different items, which may lower the average; while The New Jim Crow includes titles of different variations.

As for COVID-19, I was curious if being quarantined changed any patterns of checkouts. Between 2017 and 2023, 2022 had the most checkouts for digital items (compared to physical items) and 2019 had the most checkouts in general. This shows that there may be other factors influencing numbers of digital checkouts throughout the years. Also, we may need to utilize other factors to examine how COVID-19 pandemic have influenced checkout data, instead of looking at number of checkouts.

The Dataset

Your Choice

In this graph, I calculated the average checkouts for both in general and for The New Jim Crow. The intention was to compare checkout averages of the item with overall averages, to observe possible differences or similarities. Different from the general, more stable average of items checked out, The New Jim Crow demonstrates an unusual increase in checkout averages between 2020 and 2022. As it differs from the general mean, it is safe to say that the increase in number of checkouts of The New Jim Crow is random. It may be due the fact that a historical event - the Black Liberation Movement, occurred during the same time period. I decided to utilize line chart again as it is the most suitable way to display and compare two averages and their fluctuations throughout the years.